The White Lotus Creator Initially Had a Very Different Idea for Season 3
The hit anthology’s upcoming instalment was inspired by a fever dream, and it’s not an exaggeration.
The White Lotus’ third season is already around the corner, landing on Max with its first episode on February 16, and fans might get even more intrigued by a pretty clear statement that things in the new instalment are about to become even messier.
The show’s next instalment will take its viewers to the city of Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, with the characters potentially getting involved in yet another murder that takes place in the posh resort called White Lotus.
The third season will bring yet another exotic location to the screens, though the initial plan for the instalment was way different and eventually got scrapped for a very White Lotus-ish reason.
The White Lotus Season 3 Was Initially Set in Japan
According to The White Lotus’ creator Mike White, he wanted to turn the new season into something even more exotic by letting the whole story unfold in Japan where White himself spent a lot of time.
Eventually he had no luck with pursuing his goal of the dream destination as White’s idea was met with resistance at HBO. There the execs worried that the show just wouldn’t be able to go through all the tedious bureaucracy levels that Japan is famous for.
The studio and White then reached an agreement, having decided to set the third season in Thailand instead, but the ideas for the plot weren’t there yet — not for long though.
The White Lotus Season 3 Is Based on Mike White’s Fever Dream
The show’s upcoming instalment was already in the works, with the production team travelling across Thailand to pick some locations, when Mike White was suddenly hospitalised with severe bronchitis.
As the series’ creator revealed in an interview with Time, “they put me on a nebulizer” and “I didn’t sleep for like two nights, and by the next morning I was like, ‘I think I have the plot’”. He continued saying that his fever dream turned out to be a great help for his future work on the show since “the season is pretty much what happened that night.”
Delving into the wild story behind the third season’s plot line, White also mentioned that the fever dream had brought him an idea for the season’s ending. This probably means that all the twists and turns which The White Lotus’ new episodes will show might be something we couldn’t even imagine in our own fever dreams after all.